I was trolling the aisles of Goodwill yesterday as I generally do when I'm bored and rootless. I really didn't have the cash to be throwing around, but hey, that's what next week's payday is for, to make up for the small budget busters of the weekend. Looked over the movies and found a VHS copy of the Academy nominee film Genghis Blues. I had heard Tuvan music before, was a big fan of Tuvan recordings back in the days when I worked for SPL up on Queen Anne hill. I was even lucky to catch Hunn-Hurr-Tu once at a folk festival in Seattle, so finding a movie based on the experiences of a blues singer going over to Tuva to sing in their national symposium on throatsinging sounded like a lot of fun.
Never did I expect for the story of Paul Pena to strike so deep a chord, to hit me so hard. I watched the movie, the story of a blind musician who found himself immersed in a musical form that so few Westerners knew about or understood, who managed, through the help of Friends of Tuva, to make his way to Tuva, to sing with folk masters, to win the hearts and minds of a nation through his warm and inviting nature, and I kept asking myself as the movie unspooled, as the man got closer and closer to having to return to an America, to a land that never really appreciated him or gave the break he always deserved, "did he ever get to go back?"
There was a moment in the film, a real two hankie scene, where everything seemed to go bad for the crew. Paul had medication issues that needed to resolved in order to him to live, a San Francisco radio dj that was along for the trip suffered an almost fatal heart attack and their good Tuvan friend and guide fell and broke his hand warding off a drunk. Everyone there, both crew and the folks of Tuva, were all wishing good things for Paul, saw his distress and wished that they could somehow make all his problems go away. I was watching this man truly ache, wishing he could stay there in Tuva, live with it's people, for it seemed to him and those of us fortunate to watch this moving documetary that he had finally found his people, in the way that movie stars or writers sometimes find their audience in lands far away from where they normally write or publish. In Paul Pena's case, he stumbled on Tuvan music one night back in 1984, cruising his short wave radio looking for Korean language lessons. He heard a cut off a Tuvan recording that was being played on Radio Moscow, spent years looking for additional recordings of the music and then, once he secured a cd from a little world music store in the Mission, immersed himself in it, learning the music and the language the best he could through a sort of cobbled together system of repetitive listening and sheer brilliance (no English Tuvan language dictionaires existed back then).
I found out today with a bit of internet research that Paul has since passed away, that illness and disease and all the bad breaks that seem to fall out of the sky for blues singers finally did him in. But was lucky, in that he found friends in far away places, made friends in a faraway land where, if all things were fair and good, he would have more than likely spent the rest of life living in. It wasn't enough to watch the film, now I want to seek out his Genghis Blues recording, I want to hear some of his old blues recording, too. I want to plug into that movie again if only because that man made me feel something deep and profound, something that I think went into hybernation during this long furlow of mine. He made see that illness or blindness or a lack of work, nothing, really, should get in the way of your passions. Really, Paul, what more can anyone own other than that?
Thanks, Paul, for blazing that Tuvan trail, for sharing with the rest of the world your heart and soul. Rest in peace.
Action!
Friends of Tuva website: some links are old and don't work, but check it out:
http://www.fotuva.org/friends/paul_pena.html
Never did I expect for the story of Paul Pena to strike so deep a chord, to hit me so hard. I watched the movie, the story of a blind musician who found himself immersed in a musical form that so few Westerners knew about or understood, who managed, through the help of Friends of Tuva, to make his way to Tuva, to sing with folk masters, to win the hearts and minds of a nation through his warm and inviting nature, and I kept asking myself as the movie unspooled, as the man got closer and closer to having to return to an America, to a land that never really appreciated him or gave the break he always deserved, "did he ever get to go back?"
There was a moment in the film, a real two hankie scene, where everything seemed to go bad for the crew. Paul had medication issues that needed to resolved in order to him to live, a San Francisco radio dj that was along for the trip suffered an almost fatal heart attack and their good Tuvan friend and guide fell and broke his hand warding off a drunk. Everyone there, both crew and the folks of Tuva, were all wishing good things for Paul, saw his distress and wished that they could somehow make all his problems go away. I was watching this man truly ache, wishing he could stay there in Tuva, live with it's people, for it seemed to him and those of us fortunate to watch this moving documetary that he had finally found his people, in the way that movie stars or writers sometimes find their audience in lands far away from where they normally write or publish. In Paul Pena's case, he stumbled on Tuvan music one night back in 1984, cruising his short wave radio looking for Korean language lessons. He heard a cut off a Tuvan recording that was being played on Radio Moscow, spent years looking for additional recordings of the music and then, once he secured a cd from a little world music store in the Mission, immersed himself in it, learning the music and the language the best he could through a sort of cobbled together system of repetitive listening and sheer brilliance (no English Tuvan language dictionaires existed back then).
I found out today with a bit of internet research that Paul has since passed away, that illness and disease and all the bad breaks that seem to fall out of the sky for blues singers finally did him in. But was lucky, in that he found friends in far away places, made friends in a faraway land where, if all things were fair and good, he would have more than likely spent the rest of life living in. It wasn't enough to watch the film, now I want to seek out his Genghis Blues recording, I want to hear some of his old blues recording, too. I want to plug into that movie again if only because that man made me feel something deep and profound, something that I think went into hybernation during this long furlow of mine. He made see that illness or blindness or a lack of work, nothing, really, should get in the way of your passions. Really, Paul, what more can anyone own other than that?
Thanks, Paul, for blazing that Tuvan trail, for sharing with the rest of the world your heart and soul. Rest in peace.
Action!
Friends of Tuva website: some links are old and don't work, but check it out:
http://www.fotuva.org/friends/paul_pena.html
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